Asimov's SF, June 2010

by Dell Magazine Authors

  At last Tripp came stumping back down the road. She clambered into the cart, frost thick on her coat. “They won't let us in,” she announced.

  After such a journey, this was incomprehensible to Brod. “What? Why not?”

  Tripp pointed south. “Because of your friend Khilli, that's why. I told you news travels fast. And the news is that Khilli is coming, and not with some light force but a whole army.”

  “It's too far,” Brod said. “Surely.”

  “No,” Vala said. “My father always spoke of the need to deal with the Pole some time. Maybe he's decided this is the time.”

  “But the elders don't want to have to face the Speakerhood—not yet,” Tripp said thoughtfully. “Give us another few Great Years and we will ride out to meet those footslogging soldiers in our armored motors . . . But not yet. And not over you two. They want you gone from here, so Khilli can search as he likes and find no trace of you—not even witnesses who saw you. At least that should minimize the damage.”

  Vala looked at Brod, and he grabbed her mittened hand. “But what are we to do?” Vala asked. “Die out here in the cold? Wait for Khilli and give ourselves up?”

  Tripp said, “There's a third way. The elders are prepared to provide horses, fresh provisions—”

  Brod said, “So we could run. But where? Everywhere is south from here.”

  Tripp grinned. “But there's more than one destination south.”

  And Brod saw it. “You're talking about making for the Antistellar, aren't you? The middle of Darkside.”

  Vala was horrified. “Another journey as long as the one we've made—and without the Starlight at all?”

  Tripp began to explain how the journey would be perfectly survivable, but Brod interrupted. “This has been your dream all along, hasn't it, Polar? Everything else we've been through is just an excuse to do this—is that the story?”

  “Not at all,” she said mildly. “It certainly isn't the way I planned to do it. I came to your mother, Brod, to propose a joint expedition, properly equipped. But this mad dash is better than none at all, in this interval of volcanic mildness. At the minimum Darkside is a place to hide, until Khilli has lost his enthusiasm for the chase—or more likely his army, having reached the end of the world, starts agitating to go home. And at maximum—who knows what we'll find? Who knows what advantage we might gain?” She looked at them all, one by one. “You're with me, aren't you, Astiv? I know you—never happier than when you're on the road. Well, here's a road never traveled before. And you, Vala, Brod? Do you want to just give up? Do you want to run and hide? Or do you want to do what you said you'd do, and make history—to have your names remembered for all time, like Helen Gray? Well? What's it to be?”

  Of course there was no real argument. But still they had to wait for three watches while both Tripp and Astiv visited the station, to pick up supplies and to immerse themselves briefly in the tangled affairs of their extended, polygamous families, before they set off again.

  * * * *

  XII

  Another journey, another three hundred watches, each to be counted out by the turning of the big hourglasses mounted in Tripp's covered carts. And yet now they moved through a world that was its own clock, for with the Star forever invisible below the horizon the pinpoint lesser stars wheeled above them in a cycle that lasted forty-five watches, the length of this world's day, and its year.

  Vala was entranced, and sketched the distinctive patterns the stars made, and tried to measure the time it took them to return to the same position in the sky. Tripp encouraged her. Brod could only look at Vala's uplifted face, with the air misted by her warm breath, and try to conceal his own helpless longings.

  If Vala was adapting to this strange new life, Brod was increasingly sunk in misery. What did he care for the silent stars?—even if humans might have come from one of them. They were cold and remote and abstract, worse even than the frozen world across which he traveled. And what did he care for the Antistellar monument, if it existed at all, that was their goal? It would just be another heap of incomprehensible Substrate antiquity, irrelevant to his life.

  He threw himself into the details of the expedition. There at least he could add some value. He liked working alongside Astiv Pellt, who had stuck with Tripp and her two southerners as they swept on past the Pole station; Astiv, dogged and silent despite his habitual broken-toothed grinning, was the glue that held this expedition together.

  Once again they had their two wagons, each with thick covers and newly laden with salted and dried supplies. Their fresh horses, this time four teams for additional redundancy, were unlike any Brod had seen before: ponies really, stocky, round-bodied and covered with thick hair, they were a breed that had been developed by the Polars to be capable of withstanding long periods in the dark and cold lands beyond the Terminator. They even had special spiked iron shoes to be nailed to their hooves if they had to cross bare ice fields. But a part of the plan, unspoken but apparent to Brod, was that not all the ponies might survive the return journey, sacrificing themselves for the sake of their flesh to feed their fellows or their human passengers. So, as he helped Astiv feed and water them, Brod did his best not to become too attached to the animals.

  Supplies were always going to be a challenge. They would melt ice for water, but nothing living—and, more to the point, edible—was expected to be found in the frozen landscapes of Darkside. Tripp patiently explained that just as in normal times the warmth trapped and transported by the air of Earth III stopped the atmosphere itself freezing out on Darkside, so the massive volcanic eruption in the south had injected so much soot, ash, and gas into the air that the whole world was warmed above the long-term averages, even the sunless hemisphere. The temperature would never fall so low as to be lethal for humans—if they took appropriate precautions—probably. But they could not expect to find anything living, for plants depended on the Star's light as much as its heat, and animals depended on plants for fodder.

  During an early rest stop, with the four of them huddling in a cart by the light of a photomoss lantern, Tripp described how she intended to reach the Antistellar—a journey she had been planning for many Great Years. She took them through sketch maps of the configuration of the continents and oceans of Darkside. These were largely guesswork, based on oral lore and scraps of Helen Gray's journal that described surveys compiled from space before Landfall.

  “You can see that much of the northern half of the hemisphere is dominated by this continent, which is an extension of Seba. In the south you have these scattered islands, set in a sea that's largely covered by pack ice. Around the Antistellar, where the world is coldest, you have this ice cap. But there's a massive mountain range, it seems, at the Antistellar itself. And we believe the Antistellar Substrate monument will be somewhere in that, clear of the ice. The existence of the mountains themselves may have something to do with their unique position, opposite the Star, perhaps the result of tidal flexing. . . .”

  Brod understood none of this, and ignored the questions Vala asked.

  Tripp traced their planned route with her forefinger. “There's supposed to be a frozen lake, a massive one, just here. An inland sea, really. So we will skirt to the east of it, as we head generally south. And I intend that we should follow this valley here.” It was a monumental trench that spanned thousands of kilometers.

  Vala was fascinated. “A mighty river must have carved this valley.”

  Tripp smiled. “A river of molten rock. Helen says this is a place where the continent is splitting apart at the seams. Earth III is evidently active in this regard. And you can imagine that such a wound in the world will be warmer than the general landscape, which should help us. . . .”

  She spoke of how the continents on Earth III slid about on a deeper liquid layer like scum on stagnant water; at times the currents could break the continents up, or smash them together—whole continents! Brod had a hard time imagining the land, which he had always taken as a fixed backdrop t
o the drama of human life, as itself undergoing evolution, change, and growth.

  But all this speculation made no difference as they pressed on with their journey, a steady progression into eerie darkness, across a landscape frozen bone-hard and illuminated by strips of photomoss on their wagons and by the stars above, when the sky was clear. Everything was strange in the near-dark, distances swimming and hard to judge, the shadows thick and black and threatening, and the only noises in all the world were the clank of the horses’ hooves on the ground, and their own soft voices.

  Perhaps the strangest discovery they made was evidence of frozen life. They stumbled across banks of what might have been photomoss, or the trunks of mirror-bird trees, and Slime carpets—even what appeared to be the relics of animals, desiccated and twisted and frozen to the ground by ice like concrete. These were creatures none of them recognized.

  “How is this possible?” Tripp asked, as if speaking to herself. “Can these be relics of previous expeditions? No, surely not, for it is all far too extensive. Somehow these creatures lived here, and grew, and died—perhaps long ago. But how? No light from the Star can reach this place; the other stars are too remote, their light too feeble . . .”

  The deep mystery of these mute corpses troubled her, and Brod found he was obscurely pleased. The Polar was far too smug, in his opinion, far too quick with her explanations of the world. It was refreshing to see her as baffled, at least for a while, as he was most of the time.

  Soon they came to the rift valley, and followed it, though with caution. Yes, it appeared to be warmer than the surrounding landscape, but it was filled with features very strange to Brod: lakes of bubbling mud that gave off stinking, choking gases, fields of distorted formations crusted red and yellow in the pale photomoss light, even plains of white rock that looked like ice, but was in fact salt. Tripp explained that this was a new landscape being formed by minerals escaping from the bowels of the earth—and the salt plains may have been left behind by incursions of the ocean into this deep wound. Brod concentrated on the practicalities, such as ensuring the stocky Polar ponies did not drag them all into some stinking, bubbling pool of lethal mud.

  As the watches wore by in the endless dark they all became subdued. But Brod in particular felt a deepening disappointment, that could shade into despair—as if he had set himself on the wrong road, a path he could not now turn off.

  His relationship with Vala, or the lack of one, was surely the key to that. What had really united them had always been the physical stuff, the sex. Even on the long haul to the Pole they had been able to enjoy each other. But there was no chance of that now. Even when they found themselves alone, tucked up in one of the carts while Tripp and Astiv took the other, they rarely felt like exposing enough flesh to the cold to make any meaningful contact. And, Brod knew, the estrangement between them went deeper than that. Vala just didn't show any interest in him any more. Whereas he missed home desperately, she was fascinated by the newness of the world she was discovering. Out of place, he was sunk in misery; while her mind, which had been locked down in her role as a Sapphire, was opening like a flower.

  The idea that the whole jaunt beyond the Pole might be futile nagged at him, too. Yes, they were off to explore the Antistellar, and that had always been Tripp's goal. But they were also supposed to be fleeing Khilli. Was it really plausible that even such an obsessive as Khilli would pursue them beyond the Terminator? Were they fleeing phantoms?

  These were questions that didn't seem to occur to the others. So he developed a habit of trying to find a scrap of high ground, every few watches, and looking back the way they had come, seeking signs of pursuit. He borrowed Tripp's pocket telescope to help with the seeing. He found nothing, in one vigil after another. He wondered if he was wasting his time, even in this.

  Then, as he stood alone in the deep dark cold, he saw a light, a pinpoint, like a star but fallen to the ground, crawling slowly but steadily across the landscape. He said nothing to the others. But after that he doubled the frequency of his watches.

  And he dug his weapons out from the depths of their stores. He tried firing his muskets, seeing if the cold affected the powder or the guns’ mechanisms. And he practiced using sword and spear, club and knife, while swathed in his heavy Darkside clothing.

  * * * *

  XIII

  “'The Galaxy is old . . .'”

  Sitting alone in his son's carriage, comfortable in a lightweight simulacrum of the Left Hand Seat, Elios, Speaker of Speakers, was warm despite the chill darkness inside, with his blazing iron stove and cocooned by walls lined with padded tapestries. The light from the photomoss strips was bright enough for him to read. And, as he preferred, he read aloud, his finger following the spidery, much-copied text, trying to pick out meaning from a string of archaic words, many of which he was entirely unfamiliar with.

  “'As the Galaxy formed from a vast, spinning cloud of dust and gas and ice, embedded in a greater pocket of dark matter, the first stars congealed like frost. In the primordial cloud there wasn't much of anything except hydrogen and helium, the elements that had emerged from the Big Bang. Those first stars, mostly crowded in the Galaxy's center, were monsters. They raced through fusion chain reactions and detonated in supernovas, spewing out metals and carbon and oxygen and the other heavy elements necessary for life—at any rate, life like ours. The supernovas in turn set off a wave of starmaking in the regions outside the core, and those second stars were enriched by the products of the first . . .'”

  The heavy drapes that covered the entrance to the carriage were pushed aside, and Khilli shoved his way in. He was a bundle of black fur, bold, stern. Without a word he began to drag his outer clothing off. Beneath, he wore armor of polished leather reinforced with metal plates—not the warmest combination, and an outfit that had at first seemed excessively cautious to Elios, given how far they were from any likely foe, but he had come to understand that Khilli feared a treacherous back-stabbing from among his own ranks.

  Elios clutched his papers to his chest and waved a hand at his son. “Oh, shut that flap, in the name of the Designers; you're letting out all the heat—as usual.”

  Khilli pushed closed the flap, but he snarled, “Still lying around reading, are you? You might feel warmer if you got off your leathery arse and did some work.”

  Elios pursed his lips, but otherwise did not react. This kind of arrogant cheek was all too typical now. The boy was becoming too aggressive, too independent; he would have to be dealt with, ultimately. But not now—not here. “I take it from your relative good temper that all is going well.”

  “It could be worse.” Khilli sat on a couch, and rummaged for food, a flagon of beer. “Two ponies lost in the last three-watch. One man down—fell into one of those poison lakes. The next peel-off is due in ten more watches. We're on schedule . . .”

  Elios was sure that this was the truth. Despite the gathering tension between them, the Speaker of Speakers had felt able to relax in the growing competence of his son's generalship.

  It had already been a remarkable achievement for Khilli to deliver enough physical force to the Pole of the world to intimidate the inhabitants of that remote place. With none too subtle threats, Khilli had been able to force the Polars to hand over the provisions he needed for his ongoing pursuit, notably wagons and a whole herd of their sturdy cold-resistant ponies. And with their antique sketch maps, scraps fascinating to Elios, the elders had been able to show Khilli the likely route Tripp would take, following the rift valley to the equator of Darkside.

  Khilli had planned his mission with ruthless competence. Not for him a risky dash with a couple of carriages and a few sacks of salted meat—but he understood that his strategy of foraging and thieving his way across the landscape would not work on Darkside. So, enlisting his father's help with the numbers, he planned an elaborate sequence of deliveries and stages, like several expeditions folded into one. Having established his route, he sent carriages off early to make suppl
y drops. Then, when he was ready to depart, he took a fleet of carriages with him, all laden with provisions, all in support of a key core force. At preplanned stages a number of these carriages would “peel off,” in the language he and his officers developed, to dash back to the Pole leaving the survivors laden with fresh supplies. And, so far, it was working. Khilli had enough fat in his budget to cover losses to hazards like the strange mineral fields of the rift valley; even one fully laden wagon wrecked in a crevasse in a salt lake had not stopped him.

  And Elios, having stood atop the Substrate monument the Polars called the Pivot, and having peered up at wheeling stars forever invisible from the bright equatorial location of the Navel, could not resist the temptation to come with his son. The Speaker of Speakers had, after all, pretensions to rule the whole world. He had seen enough during his expedition to the Pole to accept that he knew far too little of the planet he lived on to justify any such claim. How could he turn away from glimpsing its hidden side? When would he get another chance—or any Speaker in the future, come to that?

  So, while Khilli tended to his men with his noisy mixture of boisterous encouragement and ostentatious punishment, and while the soldiers complained of the cold and the food and their aching feet and their piles, Elios studied the strange chimneys of discolored rock that lined the steaming mud pools, and wondered at the transient ocean that must have deposited these lakes of abandoned salt, and he watched the stars turn overhead.

  And he had brought with him fragments of the past.